NFL 2016: Week 8

The week started off with a horrendous matchup between the Titans and Jags on Thursday night, a game I did not watch a second of. On Sunday morning the racial slurs and Bengals tied in London, the final game played across the pond for the season. RedZone was balls to the wall on Sunday with 8 early games, and then Eddie Lacy like slow with 2 afternoon games. Lots of stuff happened, some of which is mentioned below.

Metaphor

I like metaphors. Humor in writing is often missed via sarcasm, but a well written metaphor will force the reader to chuckle like Gronk when he hears the number 69. As pointed out by LeBatard an event during the Seahawks game served as a perfect metaphor for the current state of the NFL. Earl Thomas, the Seahawks free safety returned a turnover for a touchdown, it was a great play. In celebration Thomas gave a referee a joyful hug and instead of smiling and slowly slipping out of the loving embrace, the pasty old white man threw a flag for excessive celebration or un-sportsman like conduct, or whatever they are calling displays of emotion these days. The NFL is not fun anymore and Thomas getting flagged for hugging a ref is a perfect representation of that.

23 Penalties

The Raiders had 23 accepted penalties called against them in their near-tie win against the Buccaneers. Many of those penalties were deserved but some of them were not. The amount of flags thrown in games this year has not increased because the players are making more mistakes, the refs are being consistent in calling every minor call (except for in game deciding plays, i.e. Falcons loss to Seahawks). The only reason I was enthralled by this game was that I was rooting for another tie. Also Derek Carr had an insane stat sheet accumulating over 500 yards passing which a lot of came in the extra time in overtime.

Dildo

In a game were Gronk caught his 69th….nice, touchdown, a dildo was thrown onto the field. There is a great clip of a ref kicking the intimate object off the field forcing him to look at it and acknowledge that he interacted with a sex toy.

Wade Phillips

Like a repressed middle school boy, I notice the number 69 everywhere. Sixty nine year old Wade Phillips, the defensive coordinator for the Broncos was wrecked by Melvin Gordon on the sidelines. In the blurry images shown during the telecast you can see Gordon run out of bounds and hit the fluffy white guy which resulted in Phillips hitting the ground harder than an object in a Lonely Island music video. Phillips was carted off the field, gave a shaky thumbs up and was replaced by a younger, goatee, but equally as white and fat line backers coach. Lots of updates were given to the health of Phillips during the broadcasts.

MVP

Tom Brady is the odds on favorite to win the league MVP. He was suspended for the first 4 games of the season due to the dumbest controversy in sports history. In the 4 games he has played he has thrown for 1,319 yards, 12 touchdowns, 0 interceptions, with a completion percentage of 73. There is nothing I want more than Tom Brady to win the MVP, the Super Bowl, and the Super Bowl MVP to give the biggest and firmest middle finger to Roger Goodell.